Transcending the State–Market Dichotomy, Developmentalism and Industrial Change: Learning from Critical African Scholars

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Abstract

Claude Ake presents the study of development as underpinned by Eurocentric
teleologism. This refers particularly to how Western social sciences have been
shaped around key disciplines that have been designed to restrain the ‘dynamic
character of reality’, with a focus on analysing order as opposed to change.
This article demonstrates the intellectual and practical limitations of linear
understandings of change and transition that abstract from the ‘dynamic
character of reality’ through disciplinary and other modes of confinement.
This has, for instance, underpinned the tendency towards dichotomisation
between the state and market across the ideological spectrum, in the study of
development. The article responds to this challenge by centring critical African
development thought in the work of Claude Ake, Thandika Mkandawire and
Adebayo Olukoshi, and shows how conceptual development and analyses
that are grounded in empirical experiences of transition problematise strict
delineations of the milieus of the state and market, and the limiting of industrial
development to particular sectors. In doing so, it showcases how progressing
beyond linear analyses of transition, such as through paradigm extension of the
developmental state paradigm to the enhanced develop
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)21-44
Number of pages24
JournalAfrica Development
Volume46
Issue number3
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2021

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